The House of a Hundred Whispers

found Timmy?’
‘No. But I heard a child crying and I thought it might be Timmy, so I went to take a look.’
Rob now saw how shaken she was. He sat up and put his arms around her and said, ‘What? What happened?’
‘I thought the child was crying in that end bedroom, so I went in and somebody pushed me out and slammed the door shut.’
‘What? Who?’
‘I don’t know who.’
‘Well, what did they look like?’
‘That’s the whole point. They didn’t look like anything. It felt like a man, but he was invisible.’
Rob stroked her back. ‘When you say “invisible”…’
‘I couldn’t see him, Rob! He pushed me so hard that I fell over but there was nobody there!’
Rob climbed out of bed, wincing as he put weight on his twisted ankle. He picked up his tweed jacket from the back of the bedroom chair and quickly tugged it on.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and take a look. If this is somebody playing some kind of stupid prank—!’
He limped along to the landing, with Vicky following close behind him. He turned down the corridor that led towards the stained-glass window and went up to the bedroom door.
‘You’re sure you heard the child crying from in here?’
‘It was very faint. But I think so. I don’t know where else it could have been coming from.’
‘Well, like I told you, I heard whispering coming from this bedroom myself. Martin said I was imagining it.’
‘I wasn’t imagining somebody pushing me out of the room and switching off the light and slamming the door in my face.’
‘All right. Let’s find out who it was.’
Rob opened the door and switched on the light. There was nobody in there. He stepped inside and cautiously looked around. Vicky stayed by the door.
‘No… nobody here,’ said Rob. He circled all the way round the room, waving his arms from side to side. ‘Can’t see them, and I can’t feel them, either, even if they’re invisible.’
‘The candlesticks,’ said Vicky.
‘What about them?’
‘Some of them fell on the floor, but whoever it was has picked them up and put them back on the table.’
Rob lifted one of them up. ‘Yes… these three don’t have any cobwebs on them. But you don’t have to worry, darling. I believe you. Something really weird is going on in this house and we need to find out what it is.’
He paused, and looked around the bedroom again, wondering if there was something he had missed.
Then he said, ‘Do you know, I have a gut feeling that somebody may be doing all this spooky stuff on purpose… the whispering and everything. Maybe it’s somebody who doesn’t want us to inherit it and they’re trying to frighten us off by making us think that it’s haunted.’
The longcase clock in the hallway struck a dolorous three. Vicky said, ‘Listen… there’s nothing else we can do tonight. The search and rescue people will be back here at six. Let’s try and get some rest before then.’
She paused, still rubbing her shoulder, and then she said, ‘I think you could be right about somebody playing tricks on us. I don’t believe in ghosts. Especially ghosts that can push you over.’

12
They were both still awake when they heard a Land Rover crunching to a halt in the driveway, and its door being slammed, and after a few seconds there was a knock at the door.
Rob looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes to six. The search and rescue team was early.
He hurried down the stairs, with Vicky following close behind him. When he opened the front door he saw that it was only John Kipling, in his crimson anorak and a black knitted bobble hat. Behind him, it was still raining, although softly and quietly.
‘No luck?’ asked Rob.
John shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. We searched nearly eight hundred hectares. All we found was a broken-down Toyota and a dead sheep.’
‘Why don’t you come inside and have something hot to drink?’ said Vicky. She looked over his shoulder towards the Land Rover in the driveway. ‘Are you alone or is there anybody with you?’
‘No, I’m alone. And a hot cup of tea would go down a treat.’
He stepped into the hallway and pulled off his bobble hat. Although he must have been forty-five or older, he looked as fit as a much younger man. He had high cheekbones and a snub nose that made him look Swedish or Polish. His accent, though, was pure Devon.
He sat down and eased off his wellington boots. ‘There’s a hole in my sock but my feet don’t smell.’
‘After what you’ve been doing all night, smelly feet would be forgiven, don’t you worry about that.’
Vicky went through to the kitchen to make John a mug of tea while Rob led him into the drawing room and switched on the lights. The fire had burned down to a heap of grey ashes, but Rob set about shovelling them out and lighting a fresh fire with crumpled-up pages of the Tiverton Gazette that he had found in the scullery, and ash twigs.
‘Always comes out on Tuesday, the Tiverton Gazette,’ said John. ‘Unusual day for a weekly paper to be published, but it coincides with market day, when there’s more people in town to buy it. It’s been going since 1858, believe it or not. The fellow who started it was only twenty-two, but he died three years later.’
‘Well, you know your local history,’ said Rob, striking a match.
‘I do, as a matter of fact. I’ve lived here all my life and it’s a fascinating part of the world. There are so many legends and fairy stories about it – spooks and demons and witches. That’s natural, I suppose, considering the landscape. You can go out on a foggy morning and imagine that you’re the only human being in the world, but you can hear weird animal noises quite close by and see shadows flitting around, behind the fog.’
‘What do you think our hopes are of finding Timmy?’ Rob asked him.
‘Like I